Sociology: A Pathway to Understanding

Sociology is the study of all societal behavior. There is the sociology of sleep, road rage, education, and work. Taking a sociological look at anything, leads to a well-rounded perspective on a given topic.

“For sociology, I think it’s vital to being a good citizen,” said Dr. Kim Hoosier. “In this class we talk about very relevant issues… we talk about race relations, social class inequality; we talk about deviance in the criminal justice system; we talk about culture, inequality from a gender perspective so real kind of real world issues that all students probably have or will encounter in their lifetimes.”

The sociological perspective is the crux of sociology. It is a view on human behavior and its connection to society as a whole. It invites people to look for the connections between the behavior of individual people and the structures of the society in which they live.

The sociological perspective allows you to even understand how certain tribes in Papua New Guinea have masculinization rituals where starting between six and ten boys are taken from their mothers and are transformed into warriors through ingesting semen.

“Sociology is not common knowledge all the time but it’s things that are commonly occurring. It gives you a different perspective on the things that are already happening in the world around you,” Hoosier said.

“My most important goal is that you think about things a little differently,” Hoosier said, “I want all of my students to come to sociology with an open mind, an open way of viewing the world and then leave sociology just thinking a little differently than maybe they had before.”